John Money: contributions to understanding cross-gender identity

John Money was conducting his landmark study on intersex children with the Doctors Hampson in the mid-1950s when a boy was referred to them as intersexed. The 5 year old was thought to be an anatomical hermaphrodite because he was behaviorally very feminine. He was found to be anatomically normal and what John referred to as a psychic hermaphrodite. John allowed me, a medical student, to assess the boy and his parents.

Other similar families followed. We published two papers before I graduated from med school, in 1960 and 1961. For John, this was a logical clinical extension from gender identity development in the intersexed. For me, it was a career launch. John introduced me toHarry Benjaminin 1964. I interviewed some of Harry’s transsexual patients in his New York office. I referred a couple for surgery in Europe as no American medical center had a program of transsexual surgery. When Reed Erickson, a wealthy female-to-male transsexual, funded Harry to set up a Foundation, some of Harry’s patients were assessed by a team.
Meetings were held in New York attended by a small group of professionals. Along with John and myself, there wereWardell Pomeroy, Henry Guze, Ruth Doorbar, and Robert Sherwin. Patients approved for surgery were shepherded by John to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. They became the pioneers in the Hopkins sex-change program.in 1966. The surgeons were those who had operated on John’s intersex patients. Some who attended the New York meetings contributed chapters to the textbook I edited with John, “Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment”, published in 1969 by the Johns Hopkins Press.
These personal anecdotes reveal that research and treatment of what emerged as Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood began with John Money and recognition by American medical centers of the legitimacy of sex-change surgery began with John Money. John’s introduction of the terms “gender identity” and “gender role” provided the core vocabulary for sexology. His characterization of the trial period of cross-gender living for gender dysphoric patients prior to possible sex-change surgery as the “Real Life Test” captured the essence of clinical mangagement.

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Dr Richard Green JD, MD, BA

B.A. in 1957, M.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1961, and J.D. from Yale Law School in 1987. Founder and editor of "the Archives of Sexual behaviors (1971) serving as editor until 2001. Research director and consultant psychiatrist at the Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital in London and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge and Member of Darwin College, Cambridge. UK.